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'People are dying': Low-wage workers terrified of taking public transit to work amid coronavirus

Sara Fearrington, a server at Waffle House in Durham, North Carolina, says she usually takes the bus 40 minutes each way to work. Since the novel coronavirus outbreak, she’s been terrified of getting infected during her commute — but she doesn’t have any other option.

“It’s virtually impossible for any commuter on the bus to not have some type of exposure,” says Fearrington, 44, who makes $3.10 per hour plus tips, adding she’s worried about bringing the disease home and endangering her husband who has a lung disease. Her shifts have been cut to one or two a week due to loss of dine-in business, and she said she shouldn’t have to choose between traveling to work and paying her bills.

“People are dying,” she says. “It’s not showing care, love, or concern for our lives.”

“There are harsh trade-offs that low-wage workers have to make,” Sara McLafferty, a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign who focuses on mass transit, told Yahoo Finance. “These workers generally don’t have the option to work at home and stay in their bubble, so they’re not only exposed to the virus but also exposed to even worse economic hardship otherwise.”

For instance, in New York City low-wage workers are as much as twice as likely to commute on mass transit than higher-paid workers, McLafferty said, referring to research she co-authored. But the public transit system in New York City is under duress, as 41 transit workers have died, and more than 6,000 have gotten ill or self-quarantined, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

“Concerns about virus exposure — that’s very real,” McLafferty says.

A bus driver wears a mask following the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., March 20, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Mary Kay Henry, the president of the two-million member Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, told Yahoo Finance that companies should take responsibility for the safety of workers on their commute, just as they should their financial well-being.

“A lot of working people have no way to get to work besides mass transit, and a key question we have to ask ourselves is how do we as a nation meet the moment?” Kay Henry says.

“That’s why a key demand of ours is job, wage, and economic security for every worker, which includes thinking about transportation needs that people have that are extraordinary in this time,” she adds.

“When we’re talking about who are the essential workers — who are the people who have to go to work to be able to come in — many of them are low-wage workers,” Moore says.

“People who have to go out, and the idea of social distancing becomes very complicated,” he adds.

Jamila Allen, 23, has worked for the past two years at Freddy’s, a fast-food restaurant in Durham, North Carolina, where she commutes on two buses that take an hour combined each way. The trip to work remains crowded, despite the coronavirus, she said — though the number of riders on the trip back at night has declined.

“You don’t know who has the virus,” she says.

During her most recent commute, on Saturday, she said that overall the buses were “quite crowded,” with many people wearing masks. (Freddy’s did not respond to a request for comment.)

“I’m taking a risk every day getting on the bus,” says Allen, who makes $9 per hour. “I’m risking my safety for poverty wages.”